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Determining one’s position in society based on the ability to perceive color may sound like an odd idea, but then again, it’s just as good as the method we currently use for social advancement: dating Madonna.

But that’s exactly the bizarro world Fforde has created in this often amusing, entirely strange satirical novel about a young man’s life in Chromatacia, a world controlled by color.

In the oppressive Colortocracy, the population has been divided into a rigid caste system based on a person’s color perception. Eddie Russert is a Red — he can see 58 percent of his color and no other. Reds are somewhere in the middle of the caste system, far above the lowly Greys, but beneath something like a Green, who could stop a Red on a train, for example, and order him to fetch a cup of tea.

Rules are paramount in the Colortocracy. Complementary colors may not marry. Anyone paying overprice or underprice for goods will be fi ned. Bicycles shall not be used beyond the Outer Markers lest the steel frames attract lightning.

Russert is betrothed to the well-bred Constance Oxblood, but when he meets Jane, an impetuous Grey who has the nerve to talk back to him, he is smitten. Jane soon has Russert questioning the precious Rules and the entire social order.

Fforde’s premise, a world organized by color, sounds shallow and only capable of furnishing enough material for an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” But in the author’s skilled hands, it becomes a sly way to satirize religion and overbearing government, as well as a constant source of amusement. Color us green with envy. — Reed Tucker